Catherine Reviews..

Sunday, December 2, 2012

I review The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky

I wanted to post this book review to take a break from beauty-related posts because not all of my posts will be about beauty products. I'm hoping to do reviews of more books, movies and other stuff.

My first book review is The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky. I hadn't read this book before I heard the movie was coming out so I read it recently because of all the hype for the movie and how everyone was saying how good the book was in light of the impending movie release.

For those who are unaware the book is about a high school freshman called Charlie who writes to an unnamed friend about his experiences during high school and the experiences of his slightly older friends Sam and Patrick. I guess you could say that Charlie and his friends are somewhat on the 'fringe' of the social microcosm that is American high school, hence the reference to being a 'wallflower', also a reference to Charlie's ability to observe the happenings of his surroundings.
I can't really say too much more about the plot because it would ruin it for those of you who haven't read it.

I know that a lot of people really liked this book and related to it really well and I can see why. It's a modern 'coming-of-age' story for the disenfranchised teenager (and what teenager doesn't feel disenfranchised at some point or other).

I however, didn't particularly like it. I'm not saying it's a bad book because I actually think it's a really good book and would certainly recommend it to others, especially to teenagers. I just think as I am no longer a teenager it was a bit more difficult to relate to it. I mean, I felt like I could only relate to it in hindsight and I didn't feel like that was especially helpful, in fact I found it a bit depressing to be honest.

Obviously, my experiences in high school were oceans apart from Charlie's (quite literally) but the sentiment/moral of the book is pretty universal. I was pretty quiet and observant in high school and I feel like that kind of introspection can be fairly difficult at times, which is I guess what Charlie learns.
This book didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know having already lived through high school myself. Perhaps that's because I wasn't engaged enough in the book or perhaps I would have been better off reading it earlier on when I was still at school. I'm not sure.

For this reason I won't be seeing the movie anytime soon although I do encourage you to read it and see what your experience with it is.